Entrance to the Josey Pavilion (Photo by Casey Dunn)
The Betty and Clint Josey Pavilion (map) is the first Living Building in Texas. The 5,000-square-foot pavilion is a site for meetings and educational events at the Dixon Water Foundation’s Leo Unit in Cooke County. Learn more about the Josey Pavilion in Lake|Flato’s online brochure about the project and this article in Texas Architect. The pavilion received an Honor Award at the 2014 AIA San Antonio Design Awards and was awarded the Architizer A+ Award in Sustainability + Architecture.
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Lake|Flato architects of San Antonio designed the facility to meet the Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous international green-building certification.
Just as Dixon Ranches show how cattle can be members of healthy range ecosystems, the Betty and Clint Josey Pavilion achieves the same ecological balance.
Living Buildings are designed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower. A flower creates its own energy from the sun. It collects the water it needs from moisture in its immediate environment. It does not pollute. It creates habitat for other species. It’s a part of an ecosystem, a beautiful thread in the living tapestry around it.
The pavilion is named after Clint Josey, the foundation’s vice-president and board chairman, and his wife, Betty, who have been advocates of holistic land management for 30 years as landowners.
Like a flower, the Josey Pavilion is a self-sufficient part of the tall-grass prairie around it. It generates its own solar energy. It collects storm water and pumps no more groundwater than it returns to the aquifer underground. Wastewater is treated in a constructed wetland at the entrance to the building. The pavilion was built with non-toxic and renewable or salvaged materials, which were sourced as locally as possible. It is a tranquil, comfortable place that—like all of the Dixon Water Foundation’s ranches—connects people with the land that sustains them.
The pavilion was completed in spring 2014, and starting October 1, 2014, the building began a one-year performance evaluation, after which the pavilion was granted certification as Texas’s first Living Building.
Below are some photos of a May, 2018 visit by some Fort Wirth 7th graders as part of Texas Wildlife Association LANDS Program.
